Glen Carbon Elementary second grader Kendall Bonney smiles as she prepares to make a landform from a dough mixture.

Glen Carbon Elementary second grader Kendall Bonney smiles as she prepares to make a landform from a dough mixture.

Photo: Julia Biggs

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Conquering the land and sea

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GLEN CARBON – Understanding the concept of landforms – mountains, oceans, plains, islands and lakes – is one of the lessons in the social studies curriculum of District 7 second-grade students.

Using a hands-on, fun activity involving dough, Glen Carbon Elementary Second-Grade Teacher Michelle Herman reinforced these concepts with her young students last week.

The second graders used dough to create a three-dimensional map that included all of the landforms in their studies.

“It’s a culminating activity that goes along with our social studies curriculum about teaching landforms. An activity to help them understand what a land form is,” Herman explained.

“(Earlier) we had a couple of lessons where we introduced what the different land forms are – a vocabulary activity, a matching activity and a textbook lesson, and this just kind of sums it up so to be sure that they understand what the landforms are and can construct them,” Herman added.

Herman walked the students through how to construct each of the landforms out of the dough while at the same time reviewing each landform’s definition.

“What’s this big flat part called?” she quizzed the second graders. “We have this flat landform around here. We don’t have the mountains. We don’t have islands, but we have this big flat landform. Sometimes it’s hilly, and it’s good for farming.”

“Plains,” Aida stated.

“Yes. And what’s that landform called that’s going to be completely surrounded by water?” Herman continued quizzing.

“An island,” Will noted.

After reviewing all the land forms, Herman explained in detail how they would be constructing them all out of dough.

“Press out dough to make your plains. Take some more, make some mountains,” Herman instructed the students.

“Remember that your mountains are the highest point of land so make it come up to a point. Not just a little hill, but we want nice big mountains. Flatten the dough out to make your valleys, and then take a little bit of dough and add an island – you can have one, two or more.”

“Then this area where there’s open cardboard is the salty water. What’s this called?”

“Ocean,” Aida said.

The students then constructed their landforms. “We will let it dry over the weekend, and then on Monday, we’ll do the fun part of labeling, making a map key and making sure it all matches,” Herman said.

Herman, who is in her 20th year teaching for District 7, pointed out that they’d continue the lesson on Monday discussing the features of a map and the role of a map key while they painted their land forms.

Herman has taught second grade at District 7 for 16 years, but also taught kindergarten and first grade for a few years during her career with the district. “I love second grade. That’s where my heart is at,” she said.

What is it about second grade that she enjoys so much? “They still love school for one. Their energy and enthusiasm for school – they love school,” Herman emphasized. “They are starting to gain their independence where they can do some things on their own, but their energy and enthusiasm is still all about school.”